Creating value and differentiation

Gone are the digital gremlins of Monday and Tuesday. As of today, Diego Tamburini and I have finessed a workflow for uploading our videos in short shrift.

Day three started afresh with, again, interesting interviews. We decided what was wowing the audience were the use cases of technology on the stands, so that’s where we focused our much of time. Highly visual, as you’ll see from our videos.

Three things stand out from yesterdays’ meanderings.

The first is Cloud. Honestly, I can’t remember speaking to anyone whose demonstration wasn’t wholly, or in part (perhaps with edge capability) Cloud based. Outside the confines of the show, I still hear sceptics telling me “Cloud’s sooo different/difficult in the context manufacturing”….. Not what we’re seeing here!

Second is the AMAZING innovation happening around connected and interconnected products and services. WOW, and I do mean WOW!

Thirdly, AI and Machine Learning are here, real and valuable. I’m really enthusiastic about the promise of these technologies, and demonstrations here at the show that my faith isn’t misplaced.

During our wander, we also came across many, many examples of intelligent automation. Among the most (visually) appealing included:

Siemens, without doubt is one of the most prominent companies showing their wares here at Hannover. So what’s different about their massive stand in Hall 9. Tom Maurer explains.

Much of the Microsoft stand is dedicated to partners and customers and we spent much time on these. First off, Richard Blatcher from PROS talks to us about innovations around pricing/costing solutions. Interesting to note that (even) these types of solutions are morphing to take advantage of new user experiences (e.g. Microsoft HoloLens) and Connected/IoT technologies.

(Again on the Microsoft stand) Ben Deefholts from Buhler showed some amazing tech used in grain sorting. Not just the tech but also to innovations in servitization.

(Again on the Microsoft stand), Bradman Lake and Rockwell showed innovations not only in areas of connected automation, but so too on novel human interfaces for machine operation.

(Again on the Microsoft stand) Rockwell also showed some unique technologies (including hardware) that helps audit and monitor networks of devices.

Our last videos of the day come from the world of Additive. Martin Steuer from EOS explains his company’s approach to 3DPrint.